Mob 101, Part 6: John Gotti

The more you know: Mob Adjacent brings you stories about the people whose names are synonymous with organized crime.

JOHN GOTTI (1940 – 2002). In tabloid lingo, Gotti was the Teflon Don, evading successful prosecution, or the Dapper Don, for his smart appearance. As boss of the Gambino family (one of New York’s original “five families”) Gotti seized control in a murderous coup in 1985 when he orchestrated the murder of acting boss Paul Castellano. Between 1985 and 1992, no gangster cut a flashier profile than John Gotti.
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Where other mob bosses lived quietly, Gotti devoured media attention. He didn’t care who knew what he did – as long as they knew his name. As America’s premier celebrity gangster, Gotti cut a dashing profile, with his swept-back silvery hair and $2,000 bespoke Brioni double-breasted suits accessorized with $400 hand-painted floral silk ties.
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Gotti saw himself as a hero, Robin Hood to the working class, admired and respected around the world. Despite his amiable public personality Gotti, secretly recorded tapes and testimony painted a picture of a narcissistic tyrant with a furious temper who betrayed allies and ordered the killing of loyalists he suspected of being informers or who hadn’t shown him proper respect.

It came crashing down in 1992 when Salvatore (Sammy) Gravano, his right-hand man, turned rat. Gravano claimed that he personally gave Mr. Gotti more than $1 million a year from shakedowns among sensational allegations. Other turncoats and investigators claimed Gotti received $10 million to $12 million in cash every year as his cut from Gambino family criminal activities.
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Most famously, tragedy struck the Gotti family in 1980 when 12-year old son Frank was killed when he darted in front of a car on his mini motorbike in the Howard Beach neighbourhood of Queens, New York. The driver, John Favara, told police he was momentarily blinded by the sun and didn't see the boy. When Mr Favara tried to apologize to Vicotria Gotti, the boy’s mother, she attacked him with a baseball bat. An enraged Gotti order Favara killed. Investigator believe Favara was killed and later put into a 55-gallon, cement-bottomed oil drum filled with acid which was later dumped into the sea. The police were reportedly told that Gotti personally dismembered Favara with a chainsaw.

 On the day of Mr. Gotti's conviction for murder and racketeering in 1992, James M. Fox, the head of the F.B.I. office in New York, proclaimed: ''The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro, and all the charges stuck.'' Gotti spent the last years of his life locked away in a maximum-security penitentiary in Springfield, Mo. He died from cancer at age 61. Below, even in prison Gotti remained dapper.

The Life and Death of John Gotti is headed for the big screen in August 2017, with John Travolta as Gotti.

Learn more about John Gotti below.